The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren is under renewed criticism from the pro-Israel community for articles critics say slant toward the Palestinian Authority and misrepresent U.S. policy towards Israel.

Pro-Israel officials have once again questioned Rudoren’s journalistic objectivity following two recent articles that they say favorably portrayed Palestinian stone throwers and falsely claimed that the United States considers Israeli settlements illegal.

Rudoren has displayed a pro-Palestinian bias since her appointment last year and may have been influenced by one of Israel’s top opponents, these critics say.

In one article, Rudoren's one-sided sympathetic piece on Palestinian rock attacks on Israelis referred to those attacks as "hobbies" and "rites of passage," while omitting the names of the victims, and neglecting to mention that those responsible for deaths were guilty of murder

“This is not the declared policy of the United States,” Steven Rosen, a former top official at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), wrote in a 2012 analysis of U.S. policy.

“Successive U.S. administrations have deplored settlement activity as an obstacle to peace, but no American president—except Jimmy Carter—has taken the view that building Jewish homes in Jerusalem constitutes a violation of the Geneva conventions,” wrote Rosen, currently director of the Washington Project of the Middle East Forum.

While Carter stated in 1980 that he considered the settlements illegal, every presidential administration of the last 30 years—as well as those before Carter’s—has refused to state this as U.S. policy.

The New York Times has now corrected Rudoren's mistake, now noting at the end of the article:

An earlier version of this article misstated the United States’ view of the West Bank settlements seized by Israel in the 1967 war. While much of the rest of the world considers them illegal, for several decades the United States has not taken a position on the settlements’ legality; In a statement on Tuesday, the State Department said, “We do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.”

As it so happens, when it comes to erroneous reporting on Israel, Rudoren has company.

Today, Lenny Ben David noted an error Thomas Friedman made in his column:

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated who controlled East Jerusalem in the years immediately prior to the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. East Jerusalem was under Jordan's control when it was taken over by Israel in the 1967 war.

Rudoren.
Thomas Friedman
CNN

Can't anyone get the facts on Israel right?

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